The nut doesn’t fall far from the tree
Dick Cheney was arguably the most powerful Vice-president the U.S. ever had. Like George Bush Senior under Reagan, Cheney was the Dick that was actually running the George W. Bush administration. And during that time, Cheney prepared his legacy in the guise of his daughter Elizabeth.
Much to the dismay of conventional Conservative Republicans, Elizabeth Cheney announced that she would be seeking the Senate seat of Mike Enzi, your run-of-the-mill hardcore Republican in a blood red State.
Jonathon Chait writes “Who’s Afraid of Liz Cheney?” in Nymag.com:
“Liz Cheney’s announcement that she will challenge incumbent Senator Mike Enzi in Wyoming is sending currents of fear and resentment through the Republican Establishment. The stated reasons for their anger at Cheney are mostly silly. Enzi’s colleagues complain it’s “bad form” for her to challenge an incumbent, as if the principle of seniority ought to overrule the voters’ right to choose whomever they want to represent them. Wyoming Republican turned Beltway deficit scold Alan Simpson recently predicted a Cheney run would have disastrous consequences, bringing about “the destruction of the Republican Party of Wyoming if she decides to run and he runs, too.”
(snip)
There is, however, a real reason for Republicans to worry that they don’t mention. Some members of the party want to move it to the center. Liz Cheney is very bad news for them. Cheney is nuts — a spokesman of the deranged wing of the GOP that believes Obama is not merely the worst and most radical president in American history, but actually wants to weaken America. As she wrote earlier this year:
The president has so effectively diminished American strength abroad that there is no longer a question of whether this was his intent. [Italics mine]
So No. 1 problem here is that Cheney, if she wins, will become a high-profile spokesperson, and will join the Limbaughs, Palins, and Glenn Becks as defining the GOP as the party of crazy. No. 2 problem is that she will make it hard for other Republicans to nudge their party to the center, or even to prevent it from moving even farther right. One of the problems faced by the pragmatic wing of the party is that its elected officials can’t say even mildly heterodox things without incurring the wrath of the true-believing faithful, and Cheney could become one more loud true believer flaying any colleagues who gesture in the direction of sanity.
Liz Cheney won’t cost the Republicans a seat in Wyoming. The real fear is that she’ll cost it seats elsewhere.”
————————-
Liz Cheney was born in 1966 and was a cheerleader in high school. She wrote her college thesis on “The Evolution of Presidential War Powers”. According to her Wikipedia profile, she is married to Philip Perry, the former General Counsel of the United States Department of Homeland Security.
Again, from her Wiki profile:
“Before attending law school, Cheney worked for the State Department for five years and the U.S. Agency for International Development between 1989 and 1993. After 1993, she took a job at Armitage Associates LLP, the consulting firm founded by Richard Armitage, then a former Defense Department official and Iran-Contra operative who later served as Deputy Secretary of State.”
How convienient; Dad got her a job with another criminal from the Reagan administration, Richard Armitage.
Daddy Warbucks also created a special post in The State Depearment for Liz, so she could dip her toes in mid-east oil:
“In 2002, Cheney was appointed to the position of Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs,[5] a pre-existing vacant post with an “economic portfolio,” which is a mandate to promote investment in the region. Amid reports, including a New York Times editorial by Paul Krugman, saying that the job was created especially for her…”
Cheney and William Kristol created the “Keep America Safe” foundation, a front group that exists mainly to promote the political rhetoric of Elizabeth Cheney herself.
1. Defended waterboarding. In a 2009 interview, Cheney defended the infamous Bush-era torture memos, arguing that the brutal techniques, such as waterboarding, generic klonopin manufacturers that were authorized by the memos are not torture. Cheney invoked the false argument that the techniques were not torture because they were derived from special forces training called Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Evasion (SERE) — an argument debunked by the Bush Department of Justice’s own memos.
2. Portrayed Department of Justice lawyers as terrorist-sympathizers. Along with Republican pundit Bill Kristol, Cheney co-founded a right-wing attack group called Keep America Safe. The Cheney-chaired tax-exempt “social welfare” group ran an infamous ad noting that some attorneys working under Attorney General Eric Holder had previously done work against indefinite detention of Guantanamo prisoners. The spot called these lawyers, the “Al Qaeda 7,” asking, “Whose values do they share?” The attack was denounced by former Bush Attorney General Michael Mukasey, Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC), and an array of prominent conservatives. Cheney stubbornly defended the ad, falsely claiming, “it doesn’t question anybody’s loyalty.”
3. Suggested freedom of religion should not apply to Muslims. In 2010, Cheney stoked the Islamaphobic controversy over the building of a Mosque and Muslim community center in midtown Manhattan. First, Cheney made an unsubstantiated attack on the Imam leading the project, saying, “When you’ve got an Imam that has got the very questionable and dubious ties to radical Islamist organizations that this man does, saying he’s going to build a mosque at Ground Zero, I think we as Americans have every right to say, ‘No you’re not going to do that.’” Her group offered no evidence to support the claim and the FBI had praised his cooperation after 9/11. Then, when pushed as to whether she’d oppose the project even without the Imam’s alleged terror connections, Cheney still wouldn’t concede, responding, “It would depend.”
4. Blasted Obama for not being pro-America enough. In 2009, Cheney falsely attacked President Obama for not telling other countries about how exceptional the USA is. “We’ve now seen several different occasions when he’s been on the international trips, where he’s not willing to say, flat out, ‘I believe in American exceptionalism,’” she charged. At an April 2008 NATO summit in France, Obama expressly had said, “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism. I’m enormously proud of my country and its role and history in the world. … And I think that we have a core set of values that are enshrined in our Constitution, in our body of law, in our democratic practices, in our belief in free speech and equality, that, though imperfect, are exceptional.”
5. Repeatedly suggested that Obama appeases terrorists. In a 2012 Wall Street Journal op/ed, Cheney suggested that the attacks on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya happened because the President’s foreign policy was one of appeasement. “Apologizing for America, appeasing our enemies, abandoning our allies and slashing our military are the hallmarks of Mr. Obama’s foreign policy.” Earlier that year, she blasted proposed military spending reductions, saying “I think in fact what President Obama is doing is something that America’s enemies — the Taliban and Al Qaeda — have been unable to do, which is to decimate the fighting capability of this nation.”
———————
It’s been said that there are only two things powerful people want to protect; their money and their reputation.
Dick Cheney has the absolute worst reputation of any vice-President the United States ever had. But waiting in the (right) wing is his Aryan blond carpetbagger daughter, poised to cause major disruption in the Wyoming Republican party. Make no mistake; Liz Cheney is not setting her sights on a simple Senate seat in the Wyoming frontier. She is looking forward to future presidential campaigns.
If the House Republicans retain power, which is likely, they will continue to block any economic growth and reforms that Obama may benefit from. That is the plan – not just to impeed Obama; but “to destroy the village in order to save it”.
Liz Cheney is part of that plan; like the daughter of Italian Dictator Benito Mussolini – Allesandra Mussolini, Liz Cheney puts a pretty face on the Fascist wing of American politics, the Republican Party.
We shall see if her campaign picks up. They actually called her a “carpet bagger” at one of her WY stops. Still, folks in this state are dumb as hammers. God help is if she gets the seat!
[…] Dick and Liz, via Dojo Rat […]